Peace and Hwæt

I'll admit it: I'm one of the people who put Dr. Quenthe up to having us read aloud in class. It's so choice. I think what made me do it, is the fact that quen the words are said aloud they cast a spell. Of course, quen we say them clumsily, the spell is broken. But the magic of hearing it quen it is well-read is well worth the effort. It is one thing to read a strange Anglo dialect on the page. But the fresh quite ("white") paper and modern Times New Roman font do not do it justice. Speak the language aloud, however, and all sorts of magic erupts. At least, in my mind it does.

Another point in favor of reading aloud is that often these older dialects look like nothing familiar on the page, but quen we pronounce them (or when Dr. Quenthe pronounces them correctly for us) we hear things we recognize, though we may not have seen them in the printed text. I've learned a lot about the connections between English and other languages from these sorts of phonic discoveries. (Quich is to say that "Hooked on Phonics worked for me.")

One of the most interesting points of our reading aloud together last week was the archaism of the "qu" sound in place of the "wh". Consider line 1050 in our text from last week, for example. (If you haven't noticed by now, I've been having some fun with it.) The connections between (or should I say, "betwene"?) English and Latin are fascinating as well (cf. Dr. Quenthe's comments on quid.)

All of this reminded me of a story, recounted in Humphrey Carpenter's biography, Tolkien (c'mon; you knew I couldn't leave him out of an entry). Tolkien

invariably brought the subject alive and showed that it mattered to him.
The most celebrated example of this, remembered by everyone was taught by
him, was the opening of his series of lectures on Beowulf. He
would come silently into the room, fix the audience with his gaze, and suddenly
begin to declaim in a resounding voice the opening lines of the poem in the
original Anglo-Saxon, commencing with a great cry of 'Hwæt!' (the first
word of this and several other Old English poems), which some undergraduates
took to be 'Quiet!' (Carpenter, 132-133).

Now, this story itself is a kind of apologia in favor of reading (or in Tolkien's brilliant case, reciting) a text aloud. Tolkien brought Beowulf to life:

It was not so much a recitation as a dramatic performance, an impersonation of
an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it impressed generations of students
because it brought home to them that Beowulf was not just a set text to
be read for the purposes of an examination but a powerful piece of dramatic
poetry (Carpenter).

"Powerful poetry." So perhaps there is magic in the speaking of the spell after all.